The Chernobyl Privileges: A Novel

Royle.

24th August

Brother,

It is your sister wishing you Happy Independence Day, and by the time this letter reaches you, your birthday. They celebrate here with all the usual drinking and fighting. And you? I’m only teasing. The old people complain that we’re always joking. I do not think that’s true. I wish it was. I need to laugh.

I’m sick. It is nonstop. But I celebrate our independence, as you may still do. Even so, we’re not so independent, are we? At least, you remain part of my story.

My husband doesn’t want me to write to you. Yet here I am, writing to you. What do I risk for this? Tonight I’ve cooked his dinner and now he’s sleeping on the sofa. Not like father used to—not like that. My husband is a good man. This is what all wives say, isn’t it? Perhaps to admit our husbands are no good is to take the blame for our choices. I know two girls from the hospital who whisper in my ear their husbands aren’t satisfying them, but what can they do? We meet for coffee at the sweet place on Taras Shevchenko Boulevard near the hospital—what is its name? Large slabs of poppy seed cake, our eyes too big for our stomachs. The cream makes me feel sick. Don’t drink the milk! The politicians came on television and said not to believe the foreigners, the milk was fine. But it never tasted the same, did it?

I don’t fear my husband. I cooked tonight a stew, and he appreciated it. He’s a good man, regardless of what you might think when I tell you he pleaded with me to stop writing to you. But can you blame him? I’ve told him all I have to tell. He sees what I could not, what father never did, what perhaps our mama knew but would not admit. That you were the wolf, brother. How does it feel to hear this?

Some think my Drago is possessive and controlling. If he found out I was writing to you, would he strike me? Would he let his anger brew like the buha in the shed? Would he burn a thousand holes into my skin? He wouldn’t have married me if that was his temperament. He says I am a survivor. He married me knowing the scars on my body and the withering of my breasts. Perhaps a sister should not share this information with her brother, but my breasts will never produce milk. They hang over my ribs like the empty sacks we used to take into the forest. My husband makes love to me despite this, perhaps because of this. There is pity in his love—can love not be this mix of pity and passion?—and when he kisses my breasts in the heat of our lovemaking he is blowing to make them full. Even if love makes for a shorter life, and the doctors’ medicines a longer one, I will take his love over their prescriptions. It is not the length of life that matters. We walk together along the Dnieper to the city, he encourages me to meet the other girls, to keep my ties to the Privileges, and I cry with the nausea of knowing that at least I have survived long enough for love.

And you, brother? Does your wife make you feel like this? Do you fight alongside her for what is important? Does she tell you to write to me? Or not to write to me? (It would not matter; what matters is that she stands beside you.) This is what I have with my husband. It’s why I’m able to write to you, even with my husband saying I should not. Can you argue with him, can you tell him why he’s wrong?

But he is wrong. Your life has been full of the privileges that come with being a man. I’m not writing to take those away from you—as if a woman could do that—but there are tales you should hear that are not the ones we heard as children, about wolves and foxes. These other stories are the ones that matter now: about our bodies, our lives. You are a man and married; you understand a woman’s body. And I am not a sister anymore but a frail thing shivering in a harsh wind. You were caught by this wind too, but your sails faced the opposite direction and you were blown away.

I’m no poet. Forgive me.

I have been happy these last few years. But there’s misery too. I’m too young for this body, for what happened. We were children. What else could we do? But we’re not children now.

Wisdom scares me. Does it scare you? Are you ready to hear what I have to say? I don’t want to, my husband doesn’t want me to, but if I don’t tell you I won’t know how to live. I am no poet but I can write a letter. I must. You see, without knowing what is happening to me, you will never know what has happened to you.

Monday

He’s on his knees, leaning forward with both hands wrist-deep in the earth when an electric shock, or something like it, flows up from the hole along his arms and across his back. He shakes it off, looking like a sopping dog crawled out from the loch, trying to subdue the sensation before it overwhelms him. It settles at the nape of his neck, and he shivers at its candescence. He blinks, looks into the hole he’s dug. Once he’s sure he’s not cut across an electrical wire, he laughs. Still alive. Perhaps his aluminium augur struck a mineral vein? The feeling lingers regardless, unpredicted, enthralling. He looks again into the puncture of earth, dug to collect ten centimetre monitoring samples. There’s nothing there. No buried phalanx of wires running from the base to carry away transmissions of upmost national importance. No crystalline strike of quartz or gold. He grips soil and it smudges through his fingers; he lurches back on his haunches and wipes his hands on his trousers and then smacks off the dirt. Whatever it was, its afterimage loiters around the back of his head, tingling like lips after blowing a tune on trace paper. He stares, but feels the pressure to get on. He has one more sample to take so he grasps the top of the auger and untwists it from the ground and then brushes away the loose soil. The new channel slowly fills with trickles of dirt rolling down the sides. He halts the sabotage by pushing in a probe. It slips into the loose earth and the soil compacts. When he feels the probe is full, he squeezes the sides inwards and pulls the tube out. He holds it up to the dim morning light. Black mulch. Nothing strange captured, no fizzing electrical fuse, no bug of strange heritage and stranger power having used its antennae on him like a Taser. From an equipment case he takes a strip of label with his loopy handwriting in red pen, peels the label onto the tube, and secures the sample in the case with the others.

He pushes himself up. From here, outside the perimeter of fencing, the naval base looks like a stack of grey boxes and black spikes and enormous soup dishes spread out across both sides of Gare Loch. Even from this far away there is the sweet mechanical hum and play of machinery, a constant wash of generators and air-conditioning, the infrequent wail of metal turning. His new home, as much as their little cottage. The sky is gunmetal grey. When is it not, here? He registers the occasional movement from Navy personnel, engineers working on the outer skin of what he’s already come to think of as a huge dormant beast. His job is to check on the health of the creature, to ensure the beast’s excretions do not foul its lair; or—with this extension of the testing parameters he’s implemented—beyond. Radiation respects no boundary, is his argument. Atoms stop at no arbitrary gate.

The lab is empty when he gets back, although there’s a fresh pot of coffee still warm on the central bench. He puts on his whites. He’s taking out the vials of earth he’s just collected when Mariam strides in.

‘Anthony. You’re here.’

‘Aye, I am so.’ His Scots accent is terrible but it sometimes makes her smile. Attempts at self-deprecation have, at least partially, smoothed over what was a bumpy arrival. They’re the same grade, he and Mariam, and she still hasn’t accepted the need for his appointment. So a few planned errors, some lapses in standards—nothing serious—and attempts at humour … He hasn’t won her over, but they’ve reached a concord, of sorts.

‘There’s a meeting,’ says Mariam.

The energy that has sat itself at the base of his neck pulsates, and the hairs on his arms stand on end. If everything is working well there are no sudden meetings.

‘Everyone’s needed.’ She reappraises her words. ‘Everyone from this lab.’

They leave and cross the road, Mariam a step in front. She knows where she’s going. He’s not often visited control; only twice, for the security interviews. No reason to; he’s not Navy. He’d thought it a necessary distinction for accepting the job. Now he’s been here for two months, what does it matter anyway?

The central administrative building of HMNB Clyde is ordered and practical, as he knew it would be. As they walk through the corridors fake wooden flooring becomes crimson carpet and oak panelling. The walls are lined with pictures in baroque frames of ships and the commanders of ships. There are wooden plates with lists of names in gold lettering. Mooring points of the service’s lineage, days of fleet superiority. He’s been told many times the Navy considers itself the primary defense; the line of last resort entrusted with the nuclear deterrent. A launch of the Trident missiles would be coordinated from along this very corridor, where Radio Four never stops playing as indication that all is right with Britannia. When the broadcast stops, so he’s been told, the commanders know what to do.

They reach a large reception. A woman behind a desk regards them. There are four soldiers in muted uniforms; their presence and the presence of their weapons are not lost on him. He’s thankful he’s wearing his whites.

‘Doctor Burnett and Doctor Fahey,’ Mariam announces. The receptionist checks their faces against her screen and waves them in.

Commodore Thompson, who Anthony knows from the pictures on the base’s website, is standing behind a huge desk in front of a window overlooking Gare Loch. The room is decorated with more iconography of submariner history. Anthony scans the desk: phone, small laptop, a large writing pad, a framed picture turned away from him, which he assumes is the Commodore’s family. The water beyond the window is a deep unyielding slate.

There are three others, all men. David, Doctor Edgecombe, is the director of scientific services and Anthony’s boss. The two others are in their fifties, four chevrons on each of their shoulders.

‘Come and join us,’ says the Commodore, waving them towards seats. In the centre of the coffee table is a pristine spray of purple flowers. Anthony hears another arrival. It’s their colleague Elspeth. She sits next to Anthony.

‘Doctor Jurnickel,’ David introduces her to the men. ‘Elspeth.’

Commodore Thompson is in his late fifties, with reddish skin but otherwise impeccably turned out. He’s not quite what Anthony was expecting. Anthony listens as the Commodore finishes off a conversation with one of the other officers. He doesn’t speak cleanly or commandingly. There’s a dullness to his voice, maybe a tiredness that’s the only way to deal with the enormity of relaying instructions to blow up the world. Finally the Commodore sits on the sofa and lays his hat on the table.

‘I’m assured of your prudence,’ begins the Commodore, turning to each of them. It’s not a question—assurances on their behalf have already been given. ‘There’s a situation with Tartarus.’ The Commodore catches his breath, looks around, almost unsteady. This alarms Anthony more than the words. But then the words come too. ‘A reactor situation.’ The words are a thumbprint against Anthony’s eardrums. ‘We thought we’d dealt with this after Vanguard …‘

‘The test reactor?’ asks Elspeth.

The Commodore turns to her, and the uniformed men follow suit.

‘Not the test this time,’ the Commodore clarifies. ‘But the same cause?’ He looks to one of the uniforms for confirmation, but whose nod is unconvincing.

‘We spent all that money,’ says Elspeth. ‘On the cladding.’

‘Indeed.’

The Commodore’s not fazed—that emergency was reported in Parliament, after a bit of kicking and screaming from the press to hand over the FOIs, Anthony remembers from the research he did for his interview.

‘Is it contained?’ asks Mariam.

‘How long was the exposure?’ adds Elspeth.

The Commodore’s eyes widen. Anthony keeps quiet, but it’s not for the officers’ benefit he says nothing.

‘All good questions,’ says the Commodore, while his stiff back says otherwise. ‘Tartarus has been evacuated. As has her restocking team. We brought her back—’

‘So she was at sea,’ Elspeth says. The Commodore glares at her. ‘We are scientists,’ she carries on. ‘We are paid to question.’

‘She was coming into base,’ explains the officer sitting to the right of the Commodore. A sturdy man, the aiguillettes of his post trailing over his left breast. ‘On regulation action.’ Anthony scrutinises the man’s face. The commander of Tartarus? Was he on the ship? In that uniform?

‘So we have a widespread problem in the ship and the water,’ the Commodore continues, blowing his nose into a handkerchief. ‘Is that right, David?’

‘One of the engineers flushed the system,’ David explains. Anthony watches a line of sweat inch down David’s forehead. ‘It wasn’t procedural. But it probably helped. With ionised water. Into the loch.’

‘Bloody wreckers,’ says the other uniform. It’s strange to hear slang used by an officer. Anthony sees it’s a deflection from something they aren’t saying, and suddenly understands the Commodore’s tension.

‘So we need readings. Immediately. Before our next action,’ says the Commodore. ‘From this team. I’m sorry for the inconvenience. But …’

The Commodore stands and Anthony feels the future suddenly stick, then start again into a new rhythm.

Anthony and Elspeth walk along the pontoon at the southern edge of the harbour, the point nearest the submarine’s route to sea. They’re dressed in waterproof waders and boots over radiation protection suits. The suit covers his whole body with the gloves on. They wear goggles and masks that are too tight around his face.

The far end of the pontoon is a long walk in these suits and the equipment is not light. They squeak as they walk. The planking is wide enough for trucks to get down and his footing need not be too careful, but the water lures him with its blankness. What it would be to just step out? He shakes the thought away.

At the end he catches his breath. This farthest point is less than a hundred feet from land, but to reach it the pontoon runs parallel with the shore for over half a mile and so it’s taken them half an hour to get to its farthest reach, and they both need a rest. He looks back. There are six small Navy frigates moored in braces along the pontoon, just before the turn that juts out into the sea. To his left, maybe a mile away, the great engineering hangar looms over the water, solid grey apart from its entrance, which is all shadows, and inside where Tartarus now rests. From here the base looks surprisingly abstract and ordered, considering how up close, when he was given his induction tour, he saw its disorderliness: the nest of thick red hoses and enormous canary-yellow crane parts and custard-yellow security cabins and red Portaloos for the contractors, and huge black brick warehouses with steel roller doors with television-shaped portholes, around which zip dozens of blue and white oxygen and water trucks that refill the subs when they’re in port. The white vans that seem to ignore with impunity the 20-mph speed limit, carrying the fifty-six thousand kilos of oats and blankets and apples that go down into the water with the crew when they disappear for their three months at sea, when nobody except two or three people, the Commodore and the Rear Admiral and the Prime Minister, know the exact location of each submarine. And everywhere huge trolleys full of broken pipes and recycled cardboard and shit and piss from the tanks taken off the subs when they come back in. He’s never met any of the actual crew, but he’s been told it takes at least a fortnight for the smell of the recycled air to be scrubbed from their skin.

‘Why flush the water if you thought there might be leakage?’ Elspeth asks. Her words are like crumpled paper through her mask but their suddenness shocks him. ‘How much would it disperse?’

‘Something must have—’ he begins, but stops. He doesn’t know what must have.

Elspeth is the physics modelling expert and unused to detection. He’s worn the suits before. As the senior biomonitor it’s his task to explore environmental dosages, cell cycle status, typologies of damage and repair. It’s his responsibility to identify carcinogenic conditions in soil, leaf and bug, vertebrates, humans. All in the job description. He’s pleased to be out taking samples related to something evident and real. He’s aware that there’s a military way of seeing things seeping into him.

‘But if there’s a crack?’ Elspeth’s accent is full of cadences, a sweet intonation at the end of the breath. She’d told him it was Orcadian, which he thought magnificently alien, until she explained that it meant from the Orkneys.

He stares at the equipment he’s carrying. Even now he knows the radiation is around them. In them.

‘They weren’t talking about the cladding.’ Her voice is sharp in his ear; she’s taken off her mask. ‘Anyone with half a brain could see that.’

He doesn’t want to entertain her thoughts, which he’s thought too. Instead he imagines who they were: the men who plugged the leak. As they reach the end of the pontoon, Anthony puts the equipment down and bends on one knee and sets up the sampling. Elspeth turns on the dosimeter and begins to scan.

‘If it’s in the water it won’t have spread to the air—’ He stops. Is that true? He’s not a marine expert. He knows Elspeth isn’t either, so no point asking.

‘Oh God,’ she says. He looks up, alarmed. But she’s not reading the meter. ‘Wreckers. If it is the reactor, then what we’re doing here …’

‘They would’ve evacuated the base,’ he says, opening the sample kit.

‘It took them two years to let anyone know about the last leak.’

‘That wasn’t so serious,’ he replies, taking the vials out of their packets.

‘Ninety-nine,’ she says. ‘Ninety-nine failures at the last Evening Star.’

‘Some of those contraventions were paperwork.’

‘They need more scientists on board.’

‘You want to go down in a sub?’ he asks her. ‘Be in charge?’

She laughs. ‘Playing with their toys? No. You, Anthony? You must want …’

‘Want what?’ he asks, as light as he can. Elspeth chooses not to answer.

He kneels, indicating they should get on.

He fills eleven vials of water at two-metre intervals down to twenty-two metres, using the extending rod to push and release. He pulls them up and hands them to Elspeth. She wipes them dry and places them in the rack. As the rod deepens into the loch he feels a pull. Each time his arm is heaved away a little more. There. Again. The electricity as he dug into the hole, tingling his neck. Tartarus was at sea when the accident happened. Yet he felt the disruption. That’s what it was! He thinks of telling Elspeth, but it’s too far-fetched.

Would Aggie believe him? Yes. Because of its mystery—or because she was desperate to reward anything he shared? Something else gnaws at him. A memory. He sees it. Hears it. The surprise pushes him forward. He wobbles and grips the rod but the rod is no good, it’s resting in the water.

‘Steady,’ says Elspeth, catching his shoulder. ‘I thought you said you didn’t want to go down in a ship?’

At the lab they dry off and remove the waterproofs and put them into decontamination buckets. Mariam and David are back from Tartarus.

‘Suits in the bins too,’ says Mariam. ‘Quickly, then we’ll get them sent off.’

Anthony takes off the underlayer of the protective suit, scrunches it up into the laundry trolley and takes off his gloves last. He stares at the pile of clothing. It should have been discussed who went on Tartarus. As the senior scientist, David would take the more dangerous job. But Mariam? Anthony throws his gloves in the trolley and goes over to David, who’s plugging a dosimeter into his laptop to download the data.

‘We should’ve discussed who went with you,’ he says quietly.

David ignores him and calls Mariam and Elspeth over, looks at them all.

‘We need a new set of guidelines put into place immediately,’ he says.

‘Our procedures aren’t—’ Mariam begins, but Anthony interrupts.

‘We need to strengthen them again.’

Mariam glares at him.

‘Look,’ says David. ‘The Commodore is—this is by far the worst that’s—although it’s … it’s, look … when this gets out, and it will, it’s going to be … a shit storm.’

Anthony’s never heard David swear.

‘There’s nothing wrong with our safety procedures,’ says Mariam.

But that, Anthony thinks, is because he’s introduced new processes, widened the scope of the testing routines, made links with experts to develop the knowledge tables. He’s tested more soil and flora, the trees and leaves outside of the base as well as inside. That wasn’t easy to get past the Navy comptrollers, but it was all done efficiently, with a successful PR push to the local media so the story didn’t become a conspiracy. This is what irks her. It passes judgment on a status quo she’d forged. But which ambitious scientist would follow the handbook? When it’s Parliament scrutinising your handiwork? There weren’t any major gaps in the procedures, he conceded that. But that didn’t mean Navy staff were compliant. Or that nuclear energy didn’t have a life of its own, beyond the base’s fences.

‘You’re right,’ says David. He looks at Mariam. ‘You both are.’

Elspeth laughs bitterly. David glares at her and she swings away.

‘Now is definitely not the time for in-fighting. We need a review of everything. Especially how we test in water. The water evacuation. Shit’—and David double-takes—’That is, if they hadn’t evacuated the water …’

‘They had to,’ says Mariam.

David passes out a portion of the existing procedures to each of them for review. Anthony’s given the marine testing. It’s a rebuke to Mariam; they both know it. David glosses over the injury with a suggestion that ‘fresh eyes’ will do the whole process some good. And now’s the perfect time to introduce the schema for looking into the fish and water insects, any water mammals.

There’s far less known about how to test within the marine environment than he’s expecting. Lots for on the boats. But in the ocean? Fish? Who has done fish? The Japanese, after Fukushima? He’s been out of the conference circle for a long time, although he still reads the proceedings when he can. And here they have access to every journal. He sits at his bench drinking cold coffee and sets to work.

It’s six o’clock when he looks at his watch. The others have the same bowed posture, leaning into their work as if the pressure of gravity might squeeze extra results from the labour. There’s been no interaction since the morning. No debrief on the water samples, which were handed over to David. Anthony’s made good progress in the procedures for marine testing, on what he’s been able to read up. What’s meant to happen now? He wanders over to David’s perch.

‘It’s gone six,’ Anthony says.

‘Has it?’ David grimaces. ‘Oh bloody hell. Christie is going to drag me by the balls through the roses. We’ve got her sister over for dinner.’

‘Get off now,’ Anthony says. ‘You’ll make good time.’

There’s a look on David’s face that says there’s a separate set of commands that Anthony’s not privy to. He can’t help but glance at Mariam. She doesn’t look up from her work. Six o’clock is not on her radar, either. His gut swims knowing he’s not included. He gulps it down.

‘I didn’t know your wife was a gardener?’

‘Hmm?’

‘The rosebushes.’

‘Oh. Look, you get off. Have you completed a review?’

‘I’ve emailed everything I’ve done so far. But there are gaps.’

‘Well, get off home. And you two, Elspeth, Mariam.’

Anthony looks at Mariam, pleased that she’s being ejected.

‘We’re happy to stay.’

‘Look,’ says David. He blinks a number of times. ‘It’s not a four person job. I can take the results over to the C when I’m done.’

David makes his body big and the three of them find themselves outside with their coats and the subjects of orders that only David has received.

It’s dark except for the bright spots of the base lights. He meanders over to his car. He watches Mariam and Elspeth get in theirs and drive off. He thinks of going back in. But he doesn’t have that rapport with David, yet.

He gets in the car and in the stillness accepts the new burden: what he cannot officially share, not even with a spouse. Aggie called him out on it straightaway once he’d taken the job. Perfect excuse, she’d said. You like your secrets. Marriage was meant to make it easier. He still believes it was an oversight—that he’d not thought it through when applying for the job. He never imagined there would be something secret enough, dangerous enough, to keep from her. Whatever, Aggie countered.

All the same, he hopes that tonight he will know what to say.

Anthony gives it—he counts—seventeen turns of the key before he phones for the recovery van. After going through the script with the call handler and confirming a mechanic is on the way, he phones Aggie.

‘Ant?’ Aggie answers. ‘Is it the motor?’

They’ve been having trouble with the Hyundai. The starter and sparks. It’s this West Coast damp, or the car rebelling against the rubbish he strews on the back seat. The soil he tramps through its footwells.

‘Fucking engine,’ says Anthony. ‘I’ve phoned Green Flag. They won’t be long, but I’ve got to get them security checked onto the base, or push the car out into the road. I’ve no idea how long that will take. Sorry.’

‘I’m making soup,’ she says.

Not, don’t say sorry.

‘Okay.’

‘You can heat it when you’re back.’

Not, I’ll wait for you.

‘If the garage is still open I’ll see what bread they’ve got.’

She’s fuming, he thinks. She is aghast at his failure to do this simple thing: to come home. So they can talk. After a while she says, ‘Not the white.’

It’s too late for soup when he’s back with new plugs, another hundred and fifty quid down, too much time thinking about what’s become stuck between them. The delay and the cost has curdled in his stomach. This wasn’t how the week was meant to begin. They were going to have the evening together. Is their week already ruined for the next six days?

Aggie is in the kitchen, the only properly warm room in the cottage, leaning against the Aga. They kiss lightly as a greeting, and he gets a mouthful of her black hair as it falls over her shoulder. He hands her a loaf.

‘It was all they had.’

‘It’s fine. Thanks. Soup?’

He shakes his head, takes the bottle of Oban from the dresser and a tumbler and sits at the kitchen table.

Aggie doesn’t say anything, then offers to make toast. He shakes his head again. She makes herself a slice while he gets out his phone and pretends to check Facebook. The toaster pops, Aggie rattles for a knife, spreads the margarine. He wills her to put on the radio to fill the silence. She offers him a bite. He flicks his head. She lingers for a moment in the doorway and disappears into the corridor. It’s half past ten.

They thought they’d have more time away from the city, engaged in village life, the Trossachs less than half an hour away, walks, Munros, air. But this new life has been lonelier than expected. The cottage is too damp to linger in. Neither wants to be there alone, waiting for the other. His job has been a saviour at least—not exactly all-consuming but Anthony’s gone at it with a graft and zeal that even he’s surprised by. This show of commitment makes Aggie happy. Happier. She’s taken up a project management role with a social enterprise in Glasgow working with people in poverty, but that’s only part-time, so she’s gone back to teaching mindfulness too; her classes are usually in the evenings, outside his work hours, so they keep missing each other. Only Mondays and Saturdays do they both find themselves, like startled shrews, at home together, this place that they have not yet made their own, unpacked boxes lining the hallway. Mondays and Saturdays when they can eat, and talk. Apart from when the car breaks down. He flicks between apps on his phone, alerts that he’s cautious not to check while at work. He suddenly feels a pang for his wife’s name. Not Aggie, her full name. Agatha. Its goodness. Do you, Agatha, take … When did he hear it last? He has a memory of them launching themselves into waves on the Atlantic coast, her swimming top torn away by the force of the surf, laughing and shivering over hot chocolates, his hands cupped around hers. An old friend of her family happening upon them in the cafe, calling her, Agatha?, interrupting their privacy.

Aggie comes back, munching her toast under which she hovers the plate to catch crumbs. She stands by the table, puts down the plate and then puts her arms around his neck, nuzzles the side of his head. Her breath is warm and yeasty. He feels the strange tingling from the earth under her kisses. He twists away, puts the phone face down on the table.

‘Porn?’ she says. ‘We can go upstairs.’

‘After you’ve eaten Marmite?’

‘That gives you away. You’re not British until you love Marmite.’

‘I thought you could love it or hate it?’

‘Not truly.’ She reaches over to her plate, picks up a quarter of toast and takes another bite. She’s chewing loudly in his ear. ‘Are you hungry? I can get you something.’

‘That really fucking irritates me. The whole Can’t-Be-British thing.’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ she says, peeling herself off him, falling onto the nearest chair. There’s a long strand of her hair caught in the spread on her toast. He stares a moment longer then rubs his face with his hands.

‘For work,’ he says, tapping the phone. ‘There’s a … lot going on.’

‘There’s a lot going on here, too.’

Aggie notices the hair stuck in the Marmite and lifts it out with a finger. She takes a final mouthful and puts a single crust on the plate. She can never quite finish anything. She won’t admit it when he points it out. It’s something to do with her parents, and they can’t talk about that now, either. The death of her father another excuse. Aggie washes up her plate.

‘There’s a letter for you,’ she says over her shoulder. ‘On the dresser.’

‘From who?’

‘It’s for you.’ He stares at her back, stretches for the Oban. ‘Looks like it’s …’

She doesn’t finish. He continues to stare, then pours out two fingers.

Three fingers.

He climbs into bed and lays there, heartburning, unwisely philosophizing. It’s chill in the bedroom and when Aggie comes in she throws on her Edinburgh half marathon T-shirt, its legend faded. She climbs in and puts a hand on his chest, her leg over his. It’s palliative, unsexy. They don’t say anything. He stares up into near black.

‘Did you open your letter?’

He grunts. He did.

‘Are you going to reply this time?’

He closes his eyes. He can’t begin to think about that as well, not yet.

‘But at least work is going well?’

Even in this mood, her patience astounds and belittles him. It is going well. Even more so because of things he cannot tell her. He doesn’t want to say what else he’s thinking but knows he’s going to say it anyway—

‘At least? Implying that …?’

She blows out her cheeks. ‘Implying nothing.’

‘It’s the cottage,’ he says after a while, for something to say. ‘It must be haunted.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s been like this since we got here.’

‘It’s not the cottage.’

‘Bad blood. Dead bodies in the walls, maybe. Miserable women who—’

‘—only women are miserable?’

‘—who were lured in by the charming proprietor—’

‘—who wears big knitted jumpers—’

‘—that’s not the—’

‘—and then married him.’

He pushes her off. She rolls away. Their awkwardness becomes overwhelming.

‘Sounds like that fairy tale, the one with the cape,’ he says. ‘Bluebeard.’

‘No, the one with the wolf.’

She turns on her side and faces him in the dark.

‘I know the one you mean. That’s not the one I mean.’

‘It’s not the cottage,’ he admits.

‘I know it’s not the bloody cottage.’

He doesn’t reply. They lie there and drift into silence until Aggie is breathing through her nose, not quite a snore but enough of a whine so he knows she’s sleeping. Now she’s asleep he can reach out a hand